I haven't used this site's recipe calculator, but all things being equal... You cannot ferment down to 1.0 SG (same as water), there will always be a certain amount of sugar that does not ferment out unless you use enzymatic additives. Even if you could, you wouldn't like the results... a very, very dry beer ! The remaining sugars are complex ones such as (but not limited to) maltose and xylose which are not as easliy fermented as fructose (fruit sugar) and dextrose (corn sugar). To better ferment the higher sugars, enzymes have to be used to break the remaining sugars down to less complex chains for the yeast to eat.

One of the additives used in the industry to make light beers is the same as the active ingredient in Beano, an anti-gas aide. A 3~5 tablets in 5 gallons will reduce the body of a beer greatly... if you like thin beer, try this one ! I often wonder if you do this, do you also fart less when drinking it ?

As an aside... alot of the malternative "alcopop" beverages such as Zima, Tequiza, Smirinov Ice, hard lemonades, "wine" coolers... etc... are made with malt being 100% of the fermentable ingredients. They add enzymes to get the beverage to ferment out as much as possible and then add water, sweetners and flavoring to finish them off. Wouldn't want to let something as inconvenient as FLAVOR to get in the way of efficient alcohol delivery !

If anyone is interested, I have extracted the recipy for Zima from the patent application from Coors and can post it. It is both scary and funny at the same time !

Mesa -- Thanks; I'm always impressed with the quality of your responses. How are you involved in the industry?

I researched the Beano thing at one point, and it really seemed to me that the Beano enzyme hydrolysed a different oligosaccharide bond than was present in the the starch-derived oligosaccharides (what is the bond that malt-derived amylases work on again? 2-4?), and that Beano would hence not affect those oligosaccharides (same as alpha/beta amylase have no effect on beta-glucans because of enzymatic specificity). Can you give more info on the beano thing, e.g. specific bonds that Beano works on, or perhaps references -- preferably web, as I don't have nearby access to a good Food Science university library?

Re - the recipe calculator thing, I was working toward a Belgian Saison clone, adding some type of sugars at about 30-40% of the fermentables as per that style (roughly). When I added the simple sugars as fermentables, the TG jumped from 1.010-ish to 1.022 -- that seems like a really jumpy jump at an addition of say 35% sugar, do ya think???

Hey, sticking my neck out here, wouldnt want to get struck off!!But, i notice that the calculator is a touch shy on colour when using amounts of black or roasted, the terminal grav derived from the calculator will not be that of brewing practice, if you view "oor Jummys Stoot" youll notice that i went away from personal experience and chased the 100% compatability with regards to colour. the result was extremely dark to say the least and at mash temp of 65c ( work out f yourselves) FG is at 1020!!! Way to heavy. I now ignore the colour and calculate my own fg